Today's class- We began with a few slides of paintings, discussing the overall color temperatures in the works. Since most colors can be perceived as either warm or cool, a whole painting can feel warm, cool, or balanced. Then we started a graded assignment related to color temperature and the seasons.
The Assignment- Take a sheet of your 18"x24" paper, use a pencil to draw 2 boxes on it, each 10" square. Set it aside. On separate paper, start making small swatches of color using your acrylic paints. The pieces of color should be no larger than 1" square. The goal is to make as many different colors as possible, and group them into temperature ranges that represent two of the seasons of the year. For example, summer would be all warm colors, winter would be all cool colors, spring and autumn have a mix of warm and cool. Colors can be made from mixing primaries together, mixing in white or black, layering one color over another. Be creative. You can make colors to fit two seasons that you choose, or make a bunch of colors first and decide afterwards which seasons they feel like.
The Assignment- Take a sheet of your 18"x24" paper, use a pencil to draw 2 boxes on it, each 10" square. Set it aside. On separate paper, start making small swatches of color using your acrylic paints. The pieces of color should be no larger than 1" square. The goal is to make as many different colors as possible, and group them into temperature ranges that represent two of the seasons of the year. For example, summer would be all warm colors, winter would be all cool colors, spring and autumn have a mix of warm and cool. Colors can be made from mixing primaries together, mixing in white or black, layering one color over another. Be creative. You can make colors to fit two seasons that you choose, or make a bunch of colors first and decide afterwards which seasons they feel like.
Once all the paint is dry, cut out the painted pieces and glue down in the 10" boxes in any arrangement you like as long as you fill the space. You should have a minimum of 100 pieces in each large square, and each should be a different color. If your pieces are clean 1" squares, then a grid of 10 by 10 fills the season box. A little overlapping or slight white spaces between are acceptable. If your seasons are adjacent you may use some of the same colors in both seasons. (For example, if you choose winter and spring, some of the cool colors used in winter can also be used for spring, along with some new warm colors representing that aspect of the season.) The samples shown above depicts the color temperatures for Autumn and Winter. On the back of the page, write which two seasons are represented by your two collages.
